In September 2016, export prices for Ceylon Tea peaked, and total exports were 3% higher than the previous September. However, all was not well for Sri Lanka’s tea sector: according to brokers, it was failing to keep its share of the most important overseas markets for black tea – with the important exception of China. There are reasons to believe this ...

Photograph courtesy Joanna Eckersley 2006: The Seeding Year Sri Lanka entered 2006 on the cusp between a failed peace process and a looming war. The year began with a murder. The killing of five Tamil students in Trincomalee and the subsequent attempt by the government to deny the existence of the crime by depicting the victims as ‘Tiger terrorists’ were ...

Communities trained as monitors to prevent another oil spill disaster Waste on the river bank All the main pollution sources along the Kelani River have been mapped by the Environmental Foundation Limited (EFL) to prevent a repeat of the disastrous leakage of diesel fuel into the river in August last year. Flowing through highly-populated and highly-industrialised zones the Kelani, ...

As Colombo received torrential rain this week, humans, animals and birds managed to rush to some sort of shelter, be it under a roof or in the thick foliage of a tree – all except a particular crow. Residents of Thalawathugoda spotted the crow soaked in the rain, unable to fly. They went up close but it didn’t move. ...

AFP PHOTO/LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHILAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI/AFP/Getty Images via ICMP As Sri Lanka approaches two years of Yahapalanaya, those concerned with issues of accountability and redress for mass atrocity crimes face a new and diverse set of challenges as they navigate Sri Lanka’s politics. Despite the historic advances marked by Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution 30/1, and Sri Lanka’s then unequivocal commitment to ...

Sri Lanka is on the cusp of history, in several months it will be presenting to the people its third constitution in the space of four decades. Abolition of the Executive Presidency, devolution of power to the provinces, independence of the judiciary and the ensuring of good governance and human rights have been central in the discussions. With interest slowly ...

Photography by Seshanka Samarajiwa / The Picture Press, courtesy 30 Years Ago Groundviews offers a look from the bottom up, at the boot pressing you into earth, a shallow grave carved out by a shell. You dodged the shrapnel, almost escaped, but here you are caught in the final push, a soldier’s heel grinding you into a bit of dirt. The scene ...

Among the Buddhist monks to rise to fame (or infamy) in Sri Lanka in recent times, the 47-year-old Venerable Ampitiye Sumanarathana Thero from the Batticaloa District is surely the star of the moment; admired and perhaps even envied, by many. A viral video of the Ven. Sumana’s barrage of choice expletives directed at a Tamil civil servant has made him ...

Published on SundayTimes on 23.10.2016 http://www.sundaytimes.lk/161023/news/land-grabbers-eye-unprotected-forests-around-sinharaja-213439.html Protect these LRC forests immediately – environmental organisations urge president School children learn importance of protecting environment at BLUE – GREEN event Environment organisations fear there is an ongoing attempt to grab forest lands in the vicinity of the Sinharaja forest by individuals and groups.. The scheme came to light when a group commenced s

“Sri Lankan mothers from the “Dead and Missing Person’s Parents” organisation hold photographs as they takes part in a protest in Jaffna, some 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of Colombo. Photo: AFP” (International Commission on Missing Persons) Note: This piece was commissioned for and originally published in Options Magazine, 51 edition, in Sri Lanka, in 2016. The full magazine ...

It sounds obvious, but the Government is the biggest buyer in the country. In 2015, the state’s shopping list came up to nearly Rs. 600 billion. That’s about 5.3% of GDP and 26% of total government expenditure, every year ‒ all of which is spent through public procurement. Six hundred billion (597, to be exact) is no laughing matter, and ...

Humans have constructed buildings since the New Stone Age, starting with simple structures built for shelter using natural materials. For many centuries later, the construction of buildings was almost one with nature, using rocks, rubble, and naturally occurring substances, until the Iron Age, when construction and tools became more sophisticated, leading to more exploitation of natural resources. This was the ...

As a civic duty more than as the more mundane CSR, LIRNEasia has been assisting the Elections Commission on Sri Lanka since 2015 March by donating intellectual work on various aspects of improving the functioning of the electoral system, including a Constitutional changes and the working through of a strategic plan. Thus when I was invited to present the Indian ...

The second annual WordCamp US, the biggest WordCamp in North America, is next month! Join us in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 2-4 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. WCUS features three tracks. Sessions include “Five Newsroom Tips for Better Website Content,” “How to Overcome Your Fears and Start Sharing Your Knowledge,” “Open Source Creativity,” “Finding Your Voice by Blogging,” and “Diversity and the Design Team.” Check ...

Note: In this piece, when I refer to ‘rape’, I refer more or less exclusively to heterosexual rape, as committed against women, by men. The omission of the discussion of other versions of sexual violence and rape is not exclusionary in intent, but because the piece attempts to discuss ‘rape’ as presented in the film ‘Silence in the Courts’, which ...

Sri Lanka’s economy, which struggled amidst the constraints of nearly three decades of civil conflict, benefitted very briefly from the “peace dividend”, following the end of hostilities in May 2009. The following three years saw one of the most rapid rates of economic growth in the world, the country becoming a “middle-income economy”. However, from 2012, growth fell back to ...

Photograph courtesy Al Jazeera Today the desire for justice is multitudinous. This is to say that struggles against injustice, struggles for survival, for self-respect, for human rights, should never be considered merely in terms of their immediate demands, their organisations, or their historical consequences. They cannot be reduced to ‘movements’. A movement describes a mass of people collectively moving towards ...

Featured image courtesy Rukshan Abeywansha/The Nation Mixed feelings prevail in the wake of Budget 2017 being presented in Parliament. Overall, the Budget was fairly holistic in coverage, being broadly linked to Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s statements to Parliament earlier this month, Chief economist at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, Anushka Wijesinha said. The focus was on modernisation and innovation, social inclusion, investment ...

Web and marketing designer Matt Sweeny builds websites on WordPress.com for a range of clients, including a landscape and design service, a cheese company at holiday markets, a public relations firm for toy manufacturers and retailers, and an indie folk band. Here, Matt shares a bit about how — and why — he uses WordPress.com, offering quick tips on building a ...

Every year, Sri Lanka loses millions of rupees due to the country’s frustrating reluctance to adopt paperless trade. It’s 2016 and both state and [some] private sector players continue to display scant regard for the need to move on to electronic documents and electronic signatures. At a time when our direct competitors are reaping the benefits of embracing and keeping ...